About one in 25 American adults takes sleeping pills to help them fall asleep and stay asleep at night, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics examined surveys of adults ages 20 and older who were asked whether they had taken a prescription sleep aid in the previous 30 days. The experts found some distinct patterns among sleeping pill users: -- Women were more likely to use sleeping pills than men (5% of women used them, along with 3.1% of men)

An estimated 62 million U.S. women are in their childbearing years. Of those, 62% use some kind of contraception. Among those who don't, 31% are pregnant, trying to get pregnant, postpartum, sterile or not sexually active. The other 7% take their chances. Among those using contraceptives, here's what they use: The pill 28% Sterilization 27.1% Condom 16.1% Vasectomy 9.9% IUD 5.5% Withdrawal 5.2% Injectable Depo-Provera 3.2% Vaginal ring 2.4 Rhythm 0.9 Other: 0.6 Statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Guttmacher Institute.

When should a women have her first baby? A majority of Americans said age 25 or younger would be the ideal, according to a new survey. Gallup recently polled 5,100 people and found that 58% said women should start having children in their early 20s or late teens. Only 3% of respondents said 31 or older is the ideal time for a woman to have her first child. In this teetering economy -- and with the unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds hovering around 13% -- the survey sparks the question: Exactly who thinks 25 is "ideal"?

More than 100 people have died in a remote part of Congo, including all those who attended the funerals of two village chiefs, in what health officials fear is an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever. People began dying of the suspected fever after the funerals in Mweka, a region of southeastern Congo where relatives usually wash the bodies of the deceased, said Jean-Constatin Kanow, chief medical inspector for the province.

The gap in life expectancy between black and white Americans is smaller than it has ever been, thanks largely to a decline in the number of deaths resulting from heart disease and HIV infection, a new analysis has found. That's the good news. The bad news is that the gap is still large: A black baby boy born today can expect to live 5.4 fewer years, on average, than his white counterpart, and a black baby girl will die 3.7 years earlier, on average, than her white counterpart. What's more, the narrowing of the gap between 2003 and 2008 is due in part to a troubling development among whites: They are more likely than in the past to die from overdoses of powerful prescription medications like OxyContin and Vicodin, along with other unintentional poisonings.

Talk about consistency: An estimated 3,958,000 babies were born in the U.S. in 2012, a mere 4,407 more than in 2011. That amounts to a difference of only slightly more than 0.1%. The figures were released Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Brady Hamilton and Paul Sutton noted that births in the U.S. had been on a steady decline since 2007, when a record-high 4,316,233 new Americans came into the world.

Men who frequently sunbathe nude using ultraviolet lamps substantially increase their risk of developing a rare and potentially fatal genital cancer, according to a new study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study shows that the penis is particularly susceptible to the carcinogenic effects of sunlight, and it advised men who are frequently exposed to ultraviolet radiation in tanning salons, on the beach, or for therapeutic purposes to protect themselves.

The fatalities ranged from the oldest man, an 80-year-old who collapsed suddenly in the middle of having sex, to the youngest, a 48-year-old, who experienced chest pains while having sex and later died in a hospital emergency room.

By successfully treating a little-known disorder that is often misdiagnosed as cerebral palsy, researchers are gaining valuable insight into an entire class of chronic neurologic conditions, including Parkinson's disease. The disease, known as Segawa's dystonia, may afflict as many as 10,000 people in the United States but often goes unrecognized. Like cerebral palsy, the crippling disorder is marked by tremors and rigidity.

Left-handers tend to die, on average, about nine years earlier than right-handers, according to a surprising and controversial new study published today by California and Canadian researchers. In analyzing data on nearly 1,000 deaths in San Bernardino and Riverside counties over a period of several months, two psychologists found that male and female left-handers were much more likely to die as a result of industrial and vehicular accidents, and somewhat more likely to die from other causes.